​On March 14, 2017, AUB President's Perspective was dedicated to announce the formation of a Task Force for A Tobacco-Free Campus.​

"A little over a year ago, I had the privilege of signing an MOU with the World Health Organization, making this university the global knowledge hub for waterpipe tobacco smoking. We were honored by a visit by Dr. Vera Da Costa E Silva, the Head of the Secretariat of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control who signed on behalf of WHO. It was a proud moment when Dr. Da Costa E Silva described AUB as “a symbol of the determination to place learning and rational thought at the heart of society”. During that meeting, surrounded by members of the AUB-TCRG and other interested parties, I undertook to make AUB completely tobacco-free within 24 months. With a packed agenda of programs in the meantime, we have kept this tight timeline in view and last month I sent out instructions to form a Taskforce for a Tobacco-Free Campus with Dr. Rima Nakkash, Associate Professor at FHS and AUB-TCRG Coordinator, chairing a faculty/staff/student advisory team that will guide the AUB community in the development, implementation, enforcement and evaluation of a tobacco‐free campus policy by the ​end of 2017.

Today, AUB campus is largely smoke-free, inasmuch as you cannot smoke here except for in designated areas, denoted by brown benches, and in private residences. The work of the taskforce is to bring an end to this accommodating approach to tobacco use, to expand it to all forms of tobacco, smokeless and the water pipe included, and to transform the university space into one that supports the choice of not smoking, that enables smoking cessation, and allows everyone the right not to be exposed to second-hand smoke. By contrast, the existence of brown-bench areas indicates smoking is an acceptable norm that we as an institution can condone. As I said in my introduction, we cannot stand by and allow that to continue. Certainly, we are open to hearing arguments against a comprehensive approach, so that every possible line of debate is explored and measures to mitigate any reasonable objections can be deployed. And I want our top-of-the-range Smoking Cessation resources to be working at full capacity to help students, faculty, and staff grasp this opportunity to liberate themselves from the destructive, demoralizing and expensive chains of addiction and impaired health that tobacco use inevitably leads to. Given our strength in research, this taskforce will deliver significant amounts of survey data that can underpin this important initiative. But if one additional person can be shielded from the ordeal of requiring my medical expertise as one of our cherished cancer patients, it will be well worth it.​"